learning several languages at the same time

trusmis Member

Registered: 2009-07-14 Posts: 103

I am sure many of us here are learning several languages at the same time.
I personally learn/improve English, Japanese and Chinese.

With this setting, I can use an AFLATT (all foreign languages all the time) method but it seems the effort is pretty diluted. I found myself thinking about how much I should be learning the other language instead when try to learn more seriously one of those.

Another example is my Anki,
I have several shared deck from useful resources for each language.
I also have a my_english, my_jap, my_chinese with words I came across in my life. But as my day tends to have all the free time accumulated at the end of it, I found myself running different languages decks one after the other(I have them limited to 8 minutes) what looks like a very bad idea .....

Any tips, strategy or failed experiences?

mezbup Member

From: sausage lip Registered: 2008-09-18 Posts: 1681 Website

I've been learning Japanese for 1.5 years now but just started learning (not studying) a bit of french because I've recently discovered theres quite a lot of french music that I like (which is what got me studying Japanese in the first place too).

My goals with Japanese are different from that of french so I study accordingly. With Japanese it's fluency in all areas and then some, with French my only goal is to be able to understand the songs i'm listening to.

Study:

Japanese = 120% effort (basically i'm doing way too much and it's starting to show)
French = 10 words a day picked from the lyrics of my favourite songs.

I noticed that just 130 of my favourite Japanese songs contain close to 4000 words in total so I figure it's a great way to obtain vocab and enjoy yourself at the same time. I'm just going to learn all the vocab in my favourite songs and i'll slowly just start to figure french out (i'm in no hurry) and if I feel the need i'll reference grammar when I want but i'm not going to "study" it.

The biggest danger is over studying something to the point it burns you out.

nest0r Member

Registered: 2007-10-19 Posts: 5236 Website

Several at the same time? That's a lot, I'm not sure many people here are learning even 2-3, much less 4. ;p Here's a thread I made in 2008: learning two languages at once

I decided to put off French till 2012. ^_^

Last edited by nest0r (2010 March 15, 1:39 am)

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killeralgae Member

From: New York Registered: 2009-05-27 Posts: 15 Website

I'd imagine that doing something like this would be more productive for more heavily related languages. or example, if you study grammar in one Romance language you are likely picking up some in another anyway.

Jaunty Member

From: California Registered: 2009-04-13 Posts: 42

I remember reading about this place a long time ago (~6 years probably). This topic reminded me that I was thinking of starting a thread about it to see if anyone had heard of it: Transnational College of LEX

Apparently it's a language center where members learn an absurd amount of languages at once - like >7. They do some things that are AJATT-ish; it focuses on immersion, but encourages speaking early. I remember hearing some good anecdotal reviews of it, but I haven't heard too much about it. Does anyone know anything about it? I think it originated in Tokyo many decades ago.

Last edited by Jaunty (2010 March 15, 1:53 am)

lagwagon555 Member

Registered: 2009-04-17 Posts: 164

I'd rather be able to understand 98% of one foreign language rather than 90% of two. Any time dedicated to L3 could be dedicated to L2. Of course, this is a personal preference, and I'm sure many people (especially if you do alot of travelling, or have other reason to become conversant in language X) would rather have the latter.

Of course, you can burn out studying one language constantly. And I do have Assimil French With Ease in my room, tempting me every time I look at it.

mezbup Member

From: sausage lip Registered: 2008-09-18 Posts: 1681 Website

lagwagon555 wrote:
I'd rather be able to understand 98% of one foreign language rather than 90% of two.

This is an extremely good point. And the more languages you learn the further your understanding of each one drops as you don't have the time it takes to reach the 98/99% level.

There's about 4 - 5 languages I want to be able to understand owing to where I live, I hear them on a daily basis so it'd be interesting to know what they're saying. Neither Japanese nor French is one of them! Still... I haven't much desire to speak in anything beyond L2 (Japanese) but definitely want to be able to understand the others I hear around me.

I think learning them after L2 is fully acquired is the best plan for me but it's a pipedream as I want to dedicate time to fluency in maths and science. A goal which, while different is rather important to me.

Thinking about it for just a second, I've budgeted 5 years for Japanese (currently 1.5 years through) and I have 3.5 years left to really rock it. 10 words a day of French (5 days a week) over the remaining 3.5 years would land me with a vocab of 9100... not too shabby for something that will give me very little trouble

I wouldn't really recommend studying 3 - 4 languages at once though unless they we're very heavily related...

Rina Member

From: Kyoto Registered: 2008-11-24 Posts: 557 Website

I'm studying both chinese and japanese, but I could know so much more if my course wasn't delaying that fact... I mean, I'm evaluated in both japanese and chinese, but other than that I also have geography that takes a lot of time, and my chinese tests are pretty much dictations of texts we'll never remember again (lol), and to study those dictations takes hours.

That said, I can't study chinese and japanese as I wanted. In a week I only study geography and one chinese dictation. And it so sucks. I think I'll change the method of the dictations soon, I'll just study the text and memoriza the new words instead of memorizing the all text, though I'm a little afraid of doing it.

So no, I don't hate to study japanese and chinese at the same, I just hate the fact that I'm not able to study them properly.

Last edited by CarolinaCG (2010 March 15, 4:26 am)

wccrawford Member

From: FL US Registered: 2008-03-28 Posts: 1551

I've seen studies that say learning an L3 will actually speed your learning of L2, not slow it.

However, that wasn't my experience. I tried learning Esperanto at the same time for a while and all I noticed was that I didn't spend as much time with Japanese as usual. I've put Esperanto away again now and I might pick it up later, when I'm -much- better at Japanese. I'm more likely to go after a real language, though, like Irish Gaelic or French.

kame3 Member

From: Netherlands Registered: 2009-09-01 Posts: 133

At the moment, I'm studying Japanese, French and Spanish at the same time, although the biggest part of my time is devoted to Japanese (, because I will be needing that the soonest as I'm going to study there). Because French and Spanish are very useful in Europe, it would be nice if I am conversational in like 2 years.
What I'm doing now is SRS'ing a grammar website for French and Spanish (a sort of Tae Kim, but then worse). I add 5 words or sentences a day for each deck, which (+ reviewing the old cards) takes around 5 min/day for both, which is very little time. After that I plan to work on my vocab with smart.fm lists. And after that I think I will listen to Spanish and French TV and the like.
But I have to say I have an advantage with French and Spanish, having studied French and Latin in high school, so a lot of words I sort of already know. I cannot imagine studying two complex languages like Chinese and Japanese at the same time.
I would recommend taking one of the languages as your primary language, depending on which you want to use first, and change your time devotion accordingly (I would say something like 80/10/10).

Last edited by kame3 (2010 March 15, 5:33 am)

Tobberoth Member

From: Sweden Registered: 2008-08-25 Posts: 3364

I've made basic attempts at learning some korean and chinese, but it seriously isn't working. It will without any doubt take time away from Japanese, which is a bad thing. If I have an hour to work on Chinese, that hour should be spent on Japanese until I'm so good that I can cut back on Japanese comfortably.

So yeah, going to put both Chinese and Korean on hold until I'm at least past JLPT1.

mezbup Member

From: sausage lip Registered: 2008-09-18 Posts: 1681 Website

wccrawford wrote:
I'm more likely to go after a real language, though, like Irish Gaelic or French.

French is cool! So much easier than Japanese... spelling is crazy though. Feels like I can intuit a lot more in French than Japanese (duh) but that's really helpful. On the subject of real languages though, learning Esperanto takes relatively little time but can give you that "language learning discount" cos it's constructed from romance languages so the roots are all there. Just a thought...

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lagwagon555 wrote:

wccrawford wrote: